‘The Masked Singer’: Polar Bear Details Why ‘Show Was Very Eye-Opening’ 

Take It Off! Take It Off!

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Masked Singer Season 9 Episode 3 “New York Night.”]

Start spreading the news… another Masked Singer contestant has been eliminated.

Medusa returned once again, this time to take on Polar Bear and California Roll (all five of them). Polar Bear was the first one to be eliminated, while the other two faced off in the Battle Royale. But while California Roll won, panelist Nicole Scherzinger rang the “Ding Dong Keep It On” Bell to save Medusa.

Under the Polar Bear mask was Joseph Saddler, the DJ and rapper better known as Grandmaster Flash. “It was quite an adventure, for something that took two and a half days,” he tells TV Insider. He shares more below.

What made you say yes to doing The Masked Singer?

Grandmaster Flash: Being an adult, we’re told, “Be responsible, pay your bills, etc.” We human beings will be doing that more than anything else we’ve done. I can remember some of my friends and family were talking about this show. I’m really busy, I travel quite a bit — when I’m not here in America, I’m in London or Paris. I can remember my friends telling me about this show and I never really paid attention to it until one day I just went on the internet and said, let me just see what this thing is about. I was like, whoa, so as the adult I am, I was like, who would do that?

Then a couple weeks went by and [I found out] The Masked Singer wanted me to [do the show]. Immediately, my adult turned on, “Oh no way, I’m not doing that.” We had a couple talks because they tried to convince me, and finally I said OK. I signed up, and I must tell you, as an adult, this was probably the toughest thing I could do ever, and I’ve done many things. I’ve been around the world a few times.

When I decided to sign up for this, I didn’t know what it entailed, so I signed off on it, they fly me and my business partner to LA. We got in the truck, the truck went to the site. As I was getting ready to get out, they went, “you can’t get out yet.” Then they handed me this Darth Vader cap to put on my head and this oversized T-shirt and these gloves [to cover up]. I was like, “what do y’all want me to do with that?” I said to myself, “stop, let’s turn off the adult right now and be child-like.”

I gotta tell you, I enjoyed doing it…. When they did the first fitting [for the costume], it was a little heavy. They took the suit off me, it disappeared, it came back an hour later, it was lighter. One part of it was left heavy on my shoulder, the suit disappeared, it came back, now it’s not heavy anymore. It was a little hot in there, I needed ventilation. The suit went back and forth almost 10 times until I was really comfortable. I went through multiple rehearsals and vocal coaching.

Michael Becker/FOX

There’s this whole process to this thing before it airs, and I must tell you, this show was very eye-opening. It’s OK to be a kid even when you’re an adult. You’ll find how healing it is. And I can remember the producers saying, “remember, Polar Bear, have a good time with it. Have fun with it.” So I had to learn how to gyrate and move in this tent-like thing with oversized shoes on. It was quite a learning experience.

That was one cool Polar Bear, and you had the entrance to match it.

[Laughs] I guess. I was trying, in the oversized shoes. It wasn’t the easiest thing for me to do my thing. I had to walk very carefully because those shoes were four or five times my size. It had a degree of difficulty, but I was like, “OK, the crowd is going ‘Po-lar Bear! Po-lar Bear!'” It kind of made me forget about how hot it was in that suit, and it was a bit heavy — all those things just disappeared when the crowd was cheering me. It was really cool.

Talk about the panelists’ guesses. You had fun responding to them.

Who was I? P Diddy, Jazzy Jeff, Flavor Flav… [Laughs] I was like, whoa. But when it came Nicole’s turn to speak, she started giving her thoughts out loud… She says Grandmaster Flash. And I was instructed, even if they guess it right, you gotta keep your cool. So keeping my cool inside this [costume] was lukewarm. It was not the easiest thing, but it was fun and the crowd screaming “Po-lar Bear! Po-lar Bear!” I think the audience kind of brought me back to my child-like, like, “Come on, Flash, you gotta have fun with this thing.”

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What went into your song choice? Your performance of “Rapture” was entertaining.

I gotta tell you, even the picking of the songs was a process. The idea was to get me a song that the audience still couldn’t guess who I was, but just enough to be pop and have a hint of hip-hop. That song was written for me, so it was not enough for anybody to guess me right away. It was pretty cool with the vocal coaches, rehearsing the song over and over and over…

The production on this thing is amazing. Not any adult is built for this. You have to really know how to turn off your adult and be child-like, otherwise you can’t handle this. And that, I can say, could be looked at as harder than some of the things you do as an adult, to be able to get down and just be silly. We try not to be silly. We want to be adults. Why should we be child-like? But I say this show shows you because there aren’t children in these suits, these are adults, and these adults decided to be child-like. We as adults can learn something from this show. That’s just my opinion.

Did you have any songs in mind if you’d continued on?

That would have been a whole process, because each stage of this show, there’s a committee. So I don’t know. I was quite surprised I got guessed so quick. I don’t know because it’s so off-base, it’s so nothing like it. I probably would’ve had the goofiest song ever to make it more difficult. I don’t know. It’s just so cool.

The Masked Singer, Wednesdays, 8/7c, Fox